270px, Inamura no hi no yakata is a

town A town is a type of a human settlement, generally larger than a village but smaller than a city. The criteria for distinguishing a town vary globally, often depending on factors such as population size, economic character, administrative stat ...

in Arida District,

Wakayama Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Wakayama Prefecture has a population of 876,030 () and a geographic area of . Wakayama Prefecture borders Osaka Prefecture to the north, and Mie Prefecture and Nara Prefecture to ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. , the town had an estimated

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

of 6,778 in 2,833 households and a

population density Population density (in agriculture: Standing stock (disambiguation), standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geog ...

of 100 persons per km². The total area of the town is .

Geography

Hirogawa is located on the coast in north-central Wakayama Prefecture, facing the Kii Channel. The Hirogawa River flows through the town. The climate is moderated by the influence of the

Kuroshio Current The , also known as the Black Current or is a north-flowing, warm ocean current on the west side of the North Pacific Ocean basin. It was named for the deep blue appearance of its waters. Similar to the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, the Ku ...

offshore.

Neighboring municipalities

Wakayama Prefecture * Aridagawa * Hidaka * Hidakagawa * Yuasa * Yura

Climate

Hirogawa has a

Humid subtropical climate A humid subtropical climate is a subtropical -temperate climate type, characterized by long and hot summers, and cool to mild winters. These climates normally lie on the southeast side of all continents (except Antarctica), generally between ...

(Köppen ''Cfa'') characterized by warm summers and cool winters with light to no snowfall. The average annual temperature in Hirogawa is 15.7 °C. The average annual rainfall is 1878 mm with September as the wettest month. The temperatures are highest on average in August, at around 26.0 °C, and lowest in January, at around 5.8 °C. The area is subject to

typhoon A typhoon is a tropical cyclone that develops between 180° and 100°E in the Northern Hemisphere and which produces sustained hurricane-force winds of at least . This region is referred to as the Northwestern Pacific Basin, accounting for a ...

s in summer.

Demographics

Per Japanese census data,Hirogawa population statistics
/ref> the population of Hirogawa has remained fairly steady over the past century.

History

The area of the modern town of Hirogawa was within ancient

Kii Province , or , was a province of Japan in the part of Honshū that is today Wakayama Prefecture, as well as the southern part of Mie Prefecture. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "''Kii''" in . Kii bordered Ise, Izumi, Kawachi, Shima, and Yamato Pro ...

, and remains from the

Jōmon period In Japanese history, the is the time between , during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism an ...

through the

Kofun period The is an era in the history of Japan from about 300 to 538 AD (the date of the introduction of Buddhism), following the Yayoi period. The Kofun and the subsequent Asuka periods are sometimes collectively called the Yamato period. This period is ...

indicate many centuries of settlement. During the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

, the hamlet of Hiro was a fishing port and farming settlement. The hamlet became famous during the

1854 Ansei-Nankai earthquake The 1854 Nankai earthquake occurred at about 16:00 local time on 24 December. It had a magnitude of 8.4 and caused a damaging tsunami. More than 30,000 buildings were destroyed and there were at least 3,000 casualties. It was the second of the ...

, when local headman

Hamaguchi Goryō was a village headman in Hiro, Kii Province (current Hirogawa, Wakayama) noted for his role in saving villagers from a tsunami during the 1854 Ansei-Nankai earthquake. In the Meiji period, he became an entrepreneur, the seventh owner of Yam ...

saved the lives of the villagers by setting fires to rice sheaves to guide villagers to a hilltop to save them from a

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from , ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions (including detonations, ...

. The story was popularized by ''Inamura no Hi: The Burning Rice Fields'' by Tsunezo Nakai (translated and published in English by Sara Cone Bryant) and

Lafcadio Hearn was a Greek-born Irish and Japanese writer, translator, and teacher who introduced the culture and literature of Japan to the Western world. His writings offered unprecedented insight into Japanese culture, especially his collections of legend ...

's ''Gleanings in Buddha-Fields'' (1897). Hamaguchi devoted himself to helping fellow villagers find jobs and built confidence by constructing a huge seawall. He also established a private academy called "Taikyu-sha" (current Taikyu Junior/High School) to give the villagers the opportunity to learn. (According to the school record, they are not teaching the way to be successful or be famous but to be practical in many ways, such as farming and ironing.) In 1907,

George Trumbull Ladd George Trumbull Ladd (; January 19, 1842 – August 8, 1921) was an American philosopher, educator and psychologist who, in 1893, became the second President of the American Psychological Association. Ladd was a vocal advocate for Japanese col ...

, assisting Marquis Ito Hirobumi, visited the school and later published his journal ''Rare Days in Japan'' (1910). The village of Hiro was established with the creation of the modern municipalities system on April 1, 1889. It was raised to town status on October 1, 1950. On April 1, 1955, Hiro merged with the neighboring villages of Minamihiro and Tsugi, becoming the town of Hirogawa.

In literature

briefly described his visit in another book ''In Korea with Marquis Ito'' (1908) as follows:

We had taken a trip to the village of Hiro Mura, where formerly lived Hamaguchi Goryo, the benevolent patron of his village, whose act of self-sacrifice in burning his rice straw in order to guide the bewildered villagers to a place of safety when they were being overwhelmed by a tidal wave in the darkness of midnight, has been made the theme of one of Lafcadio Hearn’s interesting tales. Mr. Hearn, it appears, had never visited the locality; and, indeed, we were assured that we were the first foreigners who had ever been in the village streets. A former pupil of mine is at the head of a flourishing school patronized by the Hamaguchi family; and having accepted his invitation, in the name of the entire region, to visit them and speak to the school and to the teachers of the Prefecture, the cordial greeting, hospitable entertainment, and the surpassingly beautiful scenery, afforded a rich reward for the three or four days of time required. For, as to the scenery, not the drive around the Bay of
Naples Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...
or along the
Bosphorus The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait ( ; , colloquially ) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul, Turkey. The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental bo ...
excels in natural beauty the jinrikisha ride that surmounts the cliffs, or clings to their sides, above the bay of Shimidzu (“Clear Water”); while for a certain picturesque-ness of human interest it surpasses them both. On the way back to Wakayama – for Hiro Mura is more than twenty miles from the nearest railway station- three men to each jinrikisha, running with scarcely a pause and at a rate that would have gained credit for any horse as a fairly good roadster, brought us to the well-situated tea-house at Wakano-ura. For centuries the most celebrated of Japanese poets with the women gathering seaweed at low tide, the fishermen in the offing, the stocks standing on one leg in the water or flying above the rushed of the salt marsh. Here we were met for tiffin by the Governor of the Prefecture and the mayor of the city, and immediately after escorted to the city hall of Wakayama where an audience of some eight hundred, officials and teachers, had already assembled. While in the waiting-room of this hall, a telegram from Mr. Yokoi was handed to me, announcing that Marquis Ito had already left Oiso and would reach
Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
that very evening and arrange to see me the next day.

Government

Hirogawa has a mayor-council form of government with a directly elected mayor and a

unicameral Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...

city council of 10 members. Hirogawa collectively with the other municipalities of Arida District, contributes two members to the Wakayama Prefectural Assembly. In terms of national politics, the town is part of Wakayama 3rd district of the

lower house A lower house is the lower chamber of a bicameral legislature, where the other chamber is the upper house. Although styled as "below" the upper house, in many legislatures worldwide, the lower house has come to wield more power or otherwise e ...

of the

Diet of Japan , transcription_name = ''Kokkai'' , legislature = 215th Session of the National Diet , coa_pic = Flag of Japan.svg , house_type = Bicameral , houses = , foundation=29 November 1890(), leader1_type ...

Economy

The economy of Hirogawa is centered on

commercial fishing Commercial fishing is the activity of catching fish and other seafood for Commerce, commercial Profit (economics), profit, mostly from wild fisheries. It provides a large quantity of food to many countries around the world, but those who practice ...

and

horticulture Horticulture (from ) is the art and science of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs and ornamental plants. Horticulture is commonly associated with the more professional and technical aspects of plant cultivation on a smaller and mo ...

Education

Hirogawa has three public elementary schools and two public middle schools operated by the town governments and one public high school operated by the Wakayama Prefectural Board of Education.

Transportation

Railway

JR West , also referred to as , is one of the Japan Railways Group (JR Group) companies and operates in western Honshu. It has its headquarters in Kita-ku, Osaka. It is listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the TOPIX Large70 index, ...

– Kisei Main Line *